They are undocumented, live in social hotels and seedy apartments, and eat with the help of food banks. InfoMigrants met with Uber Eats riders who work for a meager income in Paris. Many had their accounts kicked off the restaurant delivery platform following 'fraud' dismissals.
In the regions of Paris and Calais, several associations organize free outings, cultural and sporting activities and workshops of all types for migrants. InfoMigrants provides you with a (non-exhaustive) list.
Ahmed Qatib is 33 years old and from Morocco. He has been stuck in Italy for four months. The border with France is impenetrable. With few options available, he has taken to sleeping on the streets in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia and working in agriculture where he is paid a pittance. This is his story.
The extreme-right candidate Eric Zemmour has proposed to create, if he is elected president, a ministry of "remigration". The goal: "to send back one million" foreigners in five years on charter flights, and to get rid of "illegal immigrants, delinquents and foreign criminals, and foreigners on file". This proposal is riddled with problems.
31-year-old Magdi Masaraa never went to school. After years of exile, this Sudanese has entered a special professional program at the prestigious Parisian institute, Sciences Po. For the student who had "no idea what subtraction was" when he first started school in 2020, the challenge is great. But he is determined to overcome the gap that he believes separates him from his peers.
At the age of 15, Aboubacar, now a refugee in France, fled Guinea. When he crossed the Algerian desert to reach Libya, he was one of only two survivors. Aboubacar told InfoMigrants about this traumatic journey.
Seven leading non-profit organizations have filed a complaint with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in a bid to secure an international investigation into France's management of unaccompanied minors. The activists accuse the French state of "serious violations" in the protection of this vulnerable group.
French politicians have been debating whether there is a link between terrorism and immigration, after a policewoman was killed by a Tunisian man in Paris on April 23. InfoMigrants reviews the current laws on immigration and legalizing undocumented foreigners in France.
More than 18,000 unaccompanied migrant minors have gone missing in Europe in the past three years, an investigation has found. Adriana Homolova from the journalists' collective Lost in Europe says that number is far too high.
"Famille au grand cœur," an association run by a group of refugees and asylum seekers, is setting up in Montpellier in the south of France. The collective aims to offer welcome and support to young new arrivals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
The French Office of Immigration and Integration (OFII) organizes street outreach activities for homeless migrants as well as in migrant reception centers. The aim is to encourage those who have been refused asylum or those without papers to return to their countries of origin.
Following the April 11 release of Bija, an alleged Libyan trafficker who has been accused of crimes against humanity by the UN, several migrants told InfoMigrants about their experiences at the hands of this feared boss of the Libyan coast guard in Zaouia.